Manila -Madrid, 1865 -after 1902 · Filipino school and costumbrist portrait

Dressed for church, a mixed-race woman from Manila wears saya, black carpet, mantilla, rosary and missal: Granada Cabezudo paints status through clothing.

Granada Cabezudo Cristoval was born in Manila in 1865 into a Spanish family living in the Philippines, where his father was an officer. The Manila Academy of Drawing and Painting did not admit women, so she trained in the private workshop of Agustin Saez, director of the institution. She belongs to the Philippine school of costumbrismo and returned with her family to the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 1890s. A Métis woman, oil on canvas measuring 124.5 × 82.8 cm painted in 1887, was sent to the General Exhibition of the Philippines organized in Madrid. The young woman wears a voluminous pink-striped saya, a blouse and a scarf embroidered in pineapple fiber, a decorative black carpet, a mantilla lace, a pearl rosary and a prayer book. The landscape of palm trees and houses locates Manila; the elegance of the outfit indicates a cultured and wealthy woman going to church. The "Granada Cabezudo" selection notably compares a mixed race. His reading favors the story.

Cabezudo leaves no clothing silent: fibers, mantilla, carpet and missal together make up a social identity of Manila.